J. Richard Steffy, reassembling a 2,400-year-old Greek ship in 1973, was called the "Sherlock Holmes of ancient ship reconstructors."

J. Richard Steffy, reassembling a 2,400-year-old Greek ship in 1973, was called the "Sherlock Holmes of ancient ship reconstructors."

Photo: COURTESY PHOTO

Image 2 of 3

J. Richard Steffy's achievements came with humility — and without any formal training.

J. Richard Steffy's achievements came with humility — and without any formal training.

Photo: Photo Courtesy Of The Family, FAMILY PHOTO

Image 3 of 3

J. Richard Steffy, a quiet genius who built his own field

1 / 3

Back to Gallery

A giddy smile spread across J. Richard Steffy's face whenever he solved a riddle about ancient shipbuilding. His passion for nautical archaeology twinkled in his eyes.

Steffy, regarded as a founding pioneer of the study of ancient maritime construction and professor emeritus at Texas A&M University, died Thursday of chronic lung disease. He was 83.

"He was a genius," said his colleague George Bass, a professor emeritus at Texas A&M who also is considered a pioneer in the field.

Before Steffy, people who studied ancient ships were considered underwater archaeologists, Bass said. After he revolutionized the field, Bass added, they were known as nautical archaeologists who not only studied ancient ships but reconstructed them from fragments found on the sea floor. "That," Bass said, "is how good he was."

In the early 1970s, Steffy helped reconstruct an ancient Greek ship from fragments hauled up off the coast of Cyprus. It was the first time a ship had been rebuilt in such a manner, Bass said.

Another colleague and one of Steffy's former students, Cemal Pulak, said intuition often led Steffy to amazing discoveries.

He worked for almost 25 years with his father and brother in the family's electrical contracting business, M.G. Steffy & Sons, of Denver, Pa., before changing careers to follow his true passion — the study of ancient ships.

Bass, then a professor of archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, said he first met Steffy in the 1960s. Steffy had read one of his articles about ancient shipbuilding in National Geographic and contacted him about it. Bass said Steffy told him that he wanted to build ship models, but not home accessories to be displayed on mantels. He wanted to construct accurate, detailed scale models to help him understand how ships were built and worked.

Astonishing insight

Several years later, Bass said, Steffy told him that he had decided to leave the family business and devote himself full time to nautical reconstruction. "I said, 'You're crazy. You'll starve,' " Bass said.

With another passionate expert, Michael Katzev, the trio built the institute into an internationally respected program that excavated ancient shipwrecks around the world. At first, the institute was headquartered in Cyprus, but it moved to Texas A&M after war broke out on the island, Bass said.

Texas A&M also established a graduate program in nautical archaeology and hired Bass and Steffy as its first faculty members. Steffy worked on dozens of projects, studying and reconstructing ships raised from where they had lain for centuries.

International accolades were showered on him. In 1985, he was named a MacArthur Fellow for his contributions to archaeology and technical history. One of his books, Wooden Shipbuilding and the Interpretation of Shipwrecks, is considered the bible of the field, Bass said.

"My dad did all of this without any formal training," said Loren Steffy, his youngest son and a business columnist for the Houston Chronicle. "His success was driven by his passion for ships and a relentless work ethic, but his achievements were muted by his humility. He was always looking for answers to the next puzzle."

Bass said Richard Steffy showed his brilliance shortly after deciding to leave his family business.

A woman called them to her New Jersey beachfront home to tell them she had found an ancient Viking ship partially covered in sand. Steffy stared at the wooden fragments and said the ship had been built in Maine in the 19th century. Later, the woman searched newspaper files at a nearby library and found an account of a ship that had been built in Maine in the 1800s and had sunk off the coast near her home.

"He just astonished me," Bass said. "He knew the ship just by looking at the fragments."

Memorial service

Richard Steffy was preceded in death by his wife of almost 40 years, Lucille Koch Steffy of College Station, who died in 1991.

He is survived by two sons, David Steffy of Great Falls, Va., and Loren Steffy of The Woodlands; a sister, Muriel Steffy Lipp of Alexandria, Va.; a brother, Milton G. Steffy of Denver, Pa.; and seven grandchildren.